THE GOVERNMENT is to scale back the overall level of pay cuts for top level civil and public servants originally signalled in the Budget a fortnight ago.
In his Budget speech, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan announced pay cuts of 8 per cent for assistant secretaries and 12 per cent for deputy secretaries in Government departments. He also announced the termination of a performance-related bonus scheme for top civil and public servants which over recent years has involved an average payout of 10 per cent of salary.
The Government has now decided the cumulative effect of both of these cuts on staff in these the grades would have been unfair.
In a circular issued yesterday, the Department of Finance announced revised pay cuts for assistant secretaries and deputy secretaries to take account of the termination of the performance-related bonus schemes.
The department said a similar approach would be taken in respect of equivalent grades in other parts of the public service such as the HSE, local authorities, the Garda and the Defence Forces, where performance-related award schemes had been in operation but which have now been terminated.
In a statement yesterday, the department said: “The Government decided to terminate the performance-related awards for certain Civil Service grades and related posts”.
“The implementation of the pay reductions set out in the Budget without taking account of this decision would have imposed on average a reduction in excess of the reduction for all other public servants [except the Taoiseach]. This was not judged to have been fair to these grades”.
The new department circular on revised pay scales in the Civil Service to apply on foot of the Budget says “it has been decided that the reductions for the grades of deputy secretary and assistant secretary should comprise both a reduction in the salary scale and the termination of the scheme of performance-related awards previously payable to the grades which entailed an average payment of 10 per cent of salary”.
It says the new adjustments will see the pay of deputy secretaries in Government departments fall by 14 per cent, while the remuneration of an assistant secretary will be cut by 11.8 per cent. This means a deputy secretary who up to now received a salary of €177,547 plus an average performance-related award of €17,755, giving a totally of €195,302 will see this figure reduced to €168,000.
Similarly, an assistant secretary on the maximum point of the scale who had a salary of €150,712 plus an average performance-related award of €15,071 (10 per cent) giving a total of €165,783 will see this figure fall to €146,191.
Most staff in the public service earning less than €125,000 will see their salary fall by 5 – 8 per cent under the pay cuts announced in the Budget.
The new department circular says that the new revised pay scales will come into effect from the beginning of January.
The Government has decided that pensions currently being paid to retired civil servants, which traditionally have been linked to the pay of serving staff, will not be cut.
However, the Government has signalled it will review this traditional link in the months ahead.